Software developers used to hack away into the small hours of the
morning, fueled by endless supplies of soda and cold pizza. When their
code builds were ready to test and deploy, they’d throw them over the
wall to operations.

But life over the wall—where responsibilities include stress
testing, integration, and debugging—required many of the same
developer skills. That’s led many companies to adopt DevOps, an
operational methodology where software is continuously updated and deployed.

This more collaborative approach to software development was on
display at the CreatorCon Challenge, a developer
competition for startups to build apps on the ServiceNow Platform. The
latest release of the Now Platform supports DevOps, making it possible
in a matter of hours to create apps that can have a real impact on
sales automation, job satisfaction, safety, and other critical aspects
of the work experience.

“These companies didn’t exist last year,” Karel van der Poel, vice
president of next generation products at ServiceNow, said during his
CreatorCon keynote.
ServiceNow’s embrace of DevOps “is about building entire companies
fast on the platform,” he added.

Three finalists advanced to the finale at
Knowledge18 in Las Vegas. Each team had five minutes to give an
overview of its business, followed by five minutes of questions from
the judges. The winner was selected by the judges combined with the
results of an audience vote. At stake: $1 million in cash investment
and sales and launch support.

The competition

The first team up was Enable Labs, an Australian company that built
an app to help improve construction‑site safety. The app, called
Toolbox, makes sure workers have necessary certifications and keeps
track of equipment maintenance, among other features.

One out of every 10 construction workers in the U.S. is injured each
year, said Bruce Hara, the company’s managing director, which ends up
costing companies billions of dollars. With Toolbox, he said, many of
the accidents that cause injuries could be avoided. For instance, if
workers scan a crane and the generator it’s about to move, Toolbox
could alert them if the load exceeds the crane’s weight capacity.
Eventually, the company plans to use machine learning to predict when
accidents might happen, Hara said.

The judges questioned how realistic it was to think that Toolbox
could predict accidents. Hara said that was the goal, but acknowledged
that the system would need a lot of data from construction sites in
order to train its algorithm.

The second team, Recruitlive, also from Australia, created a talent
management system called EmployeeX. The system includes training,
payroll, and performance management, which owner Sukender Jain
estimates is a $14 billion market.

EmployeeX’s key feature is a chatbot named Rex, who remembers past
interactions and knows individual preferences, like the time of day
someone likes to travel. Rex makes it easy to find information and
saves people time, Jain said.

The judges mostly questioned the company’s business model. One judge
asked whether EmployeeX sat on top of existing HR systems or replaced
them. The goal is to replace them, Jain said. He expects to grow by
first targeting existing ServiceNow customers.

The last team up was SalesWon, a Virginia based ServiceNow partner
that recently developed CRM and CPQ software for ServiceNow’s
platform. The company is targeting existing ServiceNow customers that
don’t currently have a CRM system.

Many of these companies use spreadsheets to track sales, said
SalesWon CEO Jared Crowder. They generally don’t have a sophisticated
tool to generate customer quotes. At the other end of the market,
full‑featured CRM systems cost a lot and are too complicated for many
businesses to integrate. That’s where SalesWon has a large
opportunity, Crowder said.

The judges largely agreed. And after some deliberation and the
audience vote, they awarded SalesWon first prize: a $250,000 cash
investment from ServiceNow Ventures. Toolbox finished second, winning
$150,000; third‑place finisher Recruitlive took home $100,000. The
companies split $500,000 in sales and marketing support. Each of the
apps will be published in the ServiceNow Store or distributed via
ServiceNow’s OEM channel, giving these startups direct access to
ServiceNow’s customer base.

SalesWon takes first place at the CreatorCon Challenge

Big breakthroughs

In his keynote, van der Poel pointed out that many of the CreatorCon
Challenge entries took advantage of emerging technologies like
artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language
understanding, virtual agents and the Internet of Things.

These technologies, along with a host of others, are all maturing at
the same time, and could lead to a new wave of innovations. “I
actually believe we’re on the verge of a big breakthrough,” van der
Poel said. “All our apps that we build in the enterprise were designed
and built before these technologies existed. We have the opportunity
to rethink every app ever built in the enterprise.”

Adrian Bridgwater is a freelance technology journalist who has
written for Forbes, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal,
Computer Weekly, TechTarget and The Register.